


Guardian Psychopath

by animefreak



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:24:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animefreak/pseuds/animefreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the psychos aren't the bad guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dr. Spencer Reid sat fiddling with a pencil trying to concentrate on filling out the important parts of a report. Instead of words flowing smoothly from brain to pencil to paper as was usual, he found it impossible to find a place to start. It was all so ... garbled. He put the pencil down, stood up, stretched, took a couple of laps around the table and sat down again. This time he picked up a pen and proceeded to write nothing for the fourth time this morning.

Finally he went in search of the man who had replaced his mentor. The older man looked up curiously as Reid entered. Seeing the frown on the younger man's face, he set aside what he was doing and waited. Reid fidgeted, standing behind the chair across from Rossi and looking intensely irresolute, if one can actually combine those two impressions.

“Sit down.” It wasn't an invitation, it was an order. 

Reid responded with a quick movement and then closed his eyes with a frown to sort out what he was doing and why. “I can't get the report done,” he finally blurted out. His dark eyes focused on the older man, a sort of pleading look, yet not quite. 

“Why?”

“I ... I ... I'm not sure.” 

It was unlike Reid to be that uncertain of anything after the fact. The older man nodded, non judgmental. “Where does the issue start?” Again the uncharacteristic hesitation. In the field, Reid was sometimes indecisive because he could see too much or because he was missing a vital bit of information and that would stymie his ability to make the call he needed to make. After the fact he was unlikely to question judgment or decisions, although, like the rest of them, he sometimes had reason to regret his choices; usually those for which further information would have made a difference. 

“All right. You were captured,” he prompted.

Reid nodded with a sigh. This was twice in his career already that he'd ended up captured and restrained. The first time he'd been tortured. “I don't even know why,” he pointed out plaintively. “I wasn't working on anything and wham, I wake up someplace tied to a ... a table. Well, restrained, anyway.” The cuffs that held his wrists and ankles were the kind used in institutions that cared for the insane and really cared, not just paid lip service to the concept. They were lined with sheepskin, buckled tight enough he could not get his hands free, but not inclined to leave marks on him even if he struggled. The table beneath him was neither warm nor cold, just neutral. His feet were cool indicating that socks and shoes had been removed. Other than that, he was dressed as he had been.

“I didn't know who they were ... or why. There wasn't anything but a big bare room with me on a table in the center. I didn't know there was anyone else there ... not at first.”

“Who was there?” Rossi was aware that the young man had been rescued by someone, but no one knew the details yet. Debriefing the shaken agent was waiting until he could pull together the details of what happened. Rossi had not expected Reid to come to him as he would have Gideon. Their relationship was not the same, yet he was the most experienced agent available to talk to.

Reid flushed slightly. Who was there? He still didn't know her name. “A woman. Tall, athletic, dark hair and eyes; she wore a ... a shift?” He thought about it. “Used to be called a shift, sort of a light weight undergarment like an unfitted slip.”

“That's all?” The older man looked curious.

“Yeah,” his answer was thoughtful. “Just a shift. Relatively clean. She startled me badly when she ... just ... sort of appeared.”

“How did she appear?”

“One minute I was trying to establish room parameters and the next she ... she was ... straddling me.” Straddle, that was definitely the word. A warm, soft area of her body was planted on his genitals, only the fabric of his trousers and underwear between the two of them. She leaned forward until her breasts gently touched his chest, her nipples very obvious through the thin fabric of her clothing. She stared into his eyes, keeping contact as she shifted her head slightly from side to side. Then she was nearly touching his face with hers and inhaling deeply. She scented him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes half closed, imprinting his smell on her memory and he knew that this was exactly what she was doing, however odd it seemed to him. 

She lay down on top of him, letting him take her full weight as she rubbed her cheek against him. She was making it difficult to concentrate as the motion of her head was echoed by motions further down her body. He stiffened, in every sense of the word. She pulled up to gaze into his eyes again; then her mouth was on his, softly demanding, her tongue tip teasing his lips until they parted and allowed her entrance. 

It wasn't that he had not been kissed before, it was just ... “The place, the timing, the ... I was at her mercy and I'm ... “ He blushed again. 

The older man allowed himself a soft chuckle. “Bodies don't always pay attention to what our sensible minds say. It sounds like she was playing very hard to get what she wanted from you.” There was that question unspoken: did she get what she wanted?

Reid nodded and swallowed. He accepted a glass of water from the other man gratefully, fighting the urge to gulp it down. Control was the answer right now and he would exercise that control; he hoped. “She decided the buttons on my shirt were keeping her out and started to pop them one by one.” Suddenly he understood the allure of old fashioned bodice ripper romances. The sudden release of straining fabric was arousing, exhilarating, freeing ... 

Then someone slammed open the door to the room and barked something incomprehensible at them. The woman moved like a trained athlete releasing pent up energy. She was gone and he heard the crack of bones breaking. A moment more and she was back, a wickedly sharp blade in her hand echoed by the shark smile on her face. His heart froze. She sliced the cuff confining his right wrist with precision and care. He had to tug to get the sheep wool on the inside to pull apart. 

She smiled again, not quite so feral deadly and helped free his ankles while he unbuckled the left wrist. He accepted her help down and followed her to the door, then out. They were in a warehouse of some sort. Voices surrounded them. She gestured for him to stay where he was. He started to disobey and thought better of it. After all, she'd killed once, without much thought apparently; staying behind her could be safer than being with her.

He tried to ignore the sounds of carnage; gunfire erupted to his left, gurgling screams to his right and the sound of bodies dropping to cement from short and long distances ahead of him. Silence. Reid edged forward to another door that led out into the main body of the building. He could see two bodies from where he stood in the shelter of the doorway. She stepped over one of them, her shift spattered with blood and red running down her arms to the knife she held as she licked the fingers of her left hand clean. 

“Licking her fingers?”

Reid nodded. “With that really sensuous lick some people get with other ... fluids ... “ he stuttered to a halt while his mind chased images varying from ketchup to chicken grease to secretions of a very personal sort. He looked everywhere but at his companion. “I really thought she was so far gone that ... I was next. I couldn't move. She was so ... “

“Beautiful? Sensual? Aroused?” The other knew the subject as well as Reid did.

“Mind blowing,” Reid decided. What was truly consciousness altering was her dropping the knife halfway between the body he could see and him, her movements languid, sensuous and leading directly to him. She leaned up and kissed him again, the taste of blood on her tongue as it invaded his mouth. For a long moment they stood there, tongues entwined, breathing slowly, inhaling each other until they were practically sated and moved slightly apart. She smiled, fully happy and satisfied by his touch and her desire for him. 

“Mmmmm. Damn. We need to get you out of here,” she said regretfully. She took his hand and led him past the carnage. He was resolute about not taking in details. His companion was frightening enough without seeing the trail of death between the exit and where she’d left him sheltered. Outside was an ordinary parking lot and afternoon sunlight that made him blink.

“And then?” Rossi prompted.

“She checked the cars, found an open one and tossed me the keys.” It sounded so unutterably bland and normal until the vision of her blood doused body returned.

The woman caught him at the car, backing him against the curve of the door, not quite pressing against him, but touching. The still damp red transferred a little to his shirt. She ran the tip of her deep pink tongue along the edge of her nearly perfect teeth before leaning past his left cheek to take a deep breath just below his ear.

“Mmmmm.”

“That’s good?” he couldn’t keep from asking. Her chuckle was reassuring. 

“Very good.” She leaned back to look at him. Again, he could read regret in her face.

“What?”

“Wish we had more time.” She ran a finger down the button placket of his shirt. Another warm chuckle escaped her as she leaned into him again, nearly nose to nose. “You’re not afraid of me,” she told him. “you think you are, but you know better.” She tapped his breastbone, indicating the heart beating beneath it. She inhaled deeply again, savoring the smell as distant sirens drew her attention away from him. She tossed something small and cool surfaced to him as she turned away. “Speed dial is so geeky cool …”

“I swear I looked down just long enough to recognize my phone … She can’t have gone far …” Reid was bewildered by the experience. 

“There were ten bodies in the warehouse; eleven if you count the man in the room you identified as where you woke up.”

Reid nodded. “I know. Throats cut, several disemboweled and she was … licking her fingers like she was practically getting off on the blood. Until she dropped the knife, I thought I was next.” Only he wasn’t. She’d probably saved his life. The Bureau had identified most of the dead as belonging to a particularly virulent cell of Russian Mafia. They’d probably never know why they took Reid off the street or who the woman was. 

The older man nodded. “Bare bones,” he advised.

Reid nodded. Details were important, but sometimes reports could be terse.


	2. Chapter 2

Reid sat through the briefing on their latest unsub. “He” was terrorizing a small New Mexico community with a dozen kills over the last two months. The local police were certain that items left at the scene were clues to the killer's identity, but had made no headway in solving the murders. There was no pattern to the kills: four young men, three teenaged girls, three mature women and two children. The links were the damage inflicted on the victims and the odd “clues” left inside the victims. The unsub's methodology was undeniably gruesome. All victims were tortured prior to being killed, but the venues and types were different. 

The items were odd also: a fifteenth century Chinese coin, a plastic scarab, five pieces of a vintage matchbox car, a Rotweiler's canine, a chihuahua sized dog collar, a pen knife, a Tarot card, and a tin mint box. What a historian with a penchant for dogs, fortune telling, breath mints and sharpening pencils had to do with this case was more than anyone could figure out. While the description fit the items, they were well aware that this was not a picture of their unsub.

A break came from another governmental agency on the third day. They knew they were getting close to another murder, the first ones having been spaced out almost exactly 8 days apart. The sheriff was not sanguine about their ability to prevent another death and capture the unsub. The folder was delivered by a sober young man in a suit right out of Men in Black. He made Hotchner sign for the envelope, made a military grade about face and left before anyone could form a question. Hotch opened the envelope and pulled out a standard manilla folder in which were two photos and a single sheet of paper.

Hotch pinned the photos to the board they were using to break out the murders and possible links. The man was dark haired, dark eyes, with chiseled good looks that should have landed him in the movies or at least some sort of TV show about the gritty underside of law or international espionage. The woman was equally striking, although not classically beautiful. There was something about the eyes that both drew and repelled. Jason Weeks and Jett Tesuque; not necessarily their birth names, but the ones most commonly used. 

“These are only probable,” Agent Rossi reminded them over the sudden babble of voices in the room. 

“Ah ... not entirely,” Reid interjected. All eyes were suddenly on him. He wasn't sure he wanted to be the one to exonerate the pair, but he had to point out a flaw in the current theory. “The woman, Jett Tesuque, she could not have been involved in at least two of the murders.”

“Why?”

“Because she was locked in a room in a warehouse, rescued me and ... killed 11 members of the Russian Mafia the day Maria Villalobos died.” There. He'd said it. They were all staring at him except Rossi who was nodding.

“Rossi.” Hotch was frowning at the older man.

“He's right. But the items may start to make sense. Tesuque uses a knife in preference, the pen knife was extremely sharp.”

Reid nodded. “Yes. She used a knife in preference to grabbing a gun, of which there were plenty in the area.” That gave them one item of 12 to work with. “None of the rest make any sense.”

Hotch, reading over the sheet in the folder again, shook his head. “No, some of it does. Weeks is known to prefer classic cars. The five pieces make up a model of a 1956 Thunderbird. He speaks Chinese fluently, Mandarin and Cantonese.”

“And the tarot card is the Devil. How was it found? Upside down or right side up?”

“Reversed,” Spenser noted from the notes on the board. “Doesn't that negate the normal meanings of the cards?” he asked as he made a note beside the picture of the young woman who had held the card.

“Generally speaking, yes. So. While their own people suspect Weeks and Tesuque of the murders, where does that leave us?”

“Looking for someone who knows the two of them and has either killed or held them captive while working out his or her own agenda,” Rossi answered the question. “Reid?”

Spenser shrugged his shoulders. “She's capable of killing, but ... “ He gestured to the photos. “This is not her killing field. These victims are wrong.”

“Why?” Hotch shot at him. 

“She's ... “ Something clicked in his head. “She's a vigilante. She killed the Russians, mafia members, but she left me alive. She even discarded her weapon before she approached me. Not that she couldn't have killed me without it, but that she chose not to do so,” he emphasized the last word as he looked at the pictures and descriptions. “These are all innocents, comparatively. They might have made errors, but they were essentially good people.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“We find them before their people do, before the killer does,” Hotch answered. “If they're in custody, the killing stops or we have proof that they are not responsible.” He looked to Reid. “Any ideas, Spenser?”

Reid's mouth opened and closed. “No. There's no ... connection. We were held in a warehouse. I can't see her using one as a base when she was held in one ... I don't know.”

They broke for lunch. Reid stayed behind for a while, staring at the photos, looking for any correlation they could use and finding nothing. Tired, he took a walk, ending up sitting on a bench in a small park, watching the locals play and enjoy the seductive greenery. It struck him that New Mexico had a love affair with parks that were green. Maybe all the sand had something to do with that. He headed back to the local sheriff's dept, checking his car on the way in. 

Out of nowhere, he was aware of a person stepping in close to him. All the training he'd gone through left him as she pressed up close against him, trapping him against the car door. She breathed against the side of his neck, making him shiver. A chuckle told him exactly who the woman was. She nuzzled the nape of his neck, warm lips tickling his skin, raising his temperature and getting his attention. “Looking for me?”

“Sort of ...”

“Sort of?” She inhaled deeply with her nose pressed against him, filling her senses with his scent. “Only sort of?”

He took a breath, sat on his unruly libido, and pointed out that someone in the agency she worked for had brought them information on the two of them. Her sudden cessation of movement against him was worrying. For a moment he wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. Her chin dropped to his shoulder and stayed there as she seemed to think this through. 

“The Agency?”

“I presume so. The courier looked a bit MIB about things.”

She laughed at his description. “Yeah, they get all formal,” she agreed, running her hands lightly over his chest and sides. “They blame us? They're blaming Jason?” Reid nodded. He wasn't certain his voice wouldn't crack. “I haven't seen Jason since before the Russians.”

“How ...” Reid cleared his throat and tried again. “How long?” Damn, she was making it difficult to concentrate. He was a master of ignoring things, but this was ... He drew in a shuddery breath. Talk about deja vu.

She stepped back, pulled him around to face her and kissed him; not the gentle exploratory kiss of their first meeting, this one was hard and demanding. His arms went around her almost of their own volition and he pulled her against him, feeling every curve and heated surface of her in spite of the two layers of clothing separating them. The kiss became mutual, infinite, finite and ended; both of them breathing hard, they stood there, forehead to forehead for a long moment before parting. She met his gaze directly, hiding nothing. Reid knew she was a killer, probably a true psychotic, and also knew that she was not the one they sought. 

“Come with me.”

She shook her head. “No. Tell your people not to get in my way.” Her mouth touched his again in good bye. When he opened his eyes, she was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Spenser Reid was getting tired of waking up secured to hard surfaces. Unlike the last time, his head hurt and the restraints were cutting into his wrists and ankles. He groaned, lightly testing his bonds. The laugh that greeted this was not reassuring. It sounded like an old style matinee villain, grating on the nerves. Reid opened his eyes to see a disheveled and maniacal Jason Weeks grinning down at him in a bad Joker imitation. The suave and debonair movie idol looks were gone, leaving a ravaged and savage distortion behind. 

“You're awake! -- He's awake!” Weeks turned his attention to someone else.

Reid tried to turn his head to see who else was in the room. Jett? Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders, lank and dirty to match the tatters of what had been an evening gown. Why was she wearing an evening gown? Her eyes glittered behind the screen of dirt and oil. Oh hell. Reid wondered if he would survive this encounter.

“So, what do you think?” Jason asked her.

“I think you should not have started this,” she told him, seeming to choose her words carefully as she shifted slightly in the chair, letting Reid see that her wrists were bound to the arms. “I think this will end – badly,” she added, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly.

Reid could hear a difference in her voice. Jett was getting ... aroused? He jerked as Jason cut a button off his shirt. Concentrating on Jett, he'd almost forgotten the other psycho menacing him. The nutcase above him looked at Jett again.

“He told me about you,” the man breathed. “Told me all about his psycho slut ... about the bitch he could care about instead of me!” The last was a shriek as the knife plunged into the table a scant inch from Reid's head.

Reid sensed the cock of her head to one side as they both tried to make sense of the rant. The sharp sound of wood cracking and splintering startled him. Jason yanked the knife up too late. Jett used the arm of the chair to knock the knife away, catching the blade as it fell and using it to sever the plastic ties still holding the wood to her arm. Freed, she let Jason have a slow smile that made Reid shudder even as he recognized the curve of her lips from the last time she rescued him. 

A swift slice set his right arm free. Reid jerked away as Jason moved forward to attack Jett with his bare hands. The maniac back pedaled just as swiftly as Jett went on the offensive, narrowly missing her attacker's belly with the blade she now held like the professional she was. Knowing this could end badly for him, Reid yanked against the remaining fastenings and toppled the table to the floor as Jason snarled at Jett, his words incomprehensible. Whatever was eating at him, the crazed agent apparently decided discretion was a good idea and dove into the dark recesses of the workroom he'd set up leaving Jett a moment to finish releasing Reid from the rest of his bonds.

“Jett ...” Reid began as she lifted the table to get at the plastic ties holding him.

“Shhh.” She held a battered finger to her lips to silence him, then licked the dirt from one as she regarded him obliquely. She leaned in close, her lips so tantalizingly near, her breath sizzling his ear. “Get out. Now.”

He tried to search her face to see what she would do if he disobeyed her. The smile became feral as he watched, her eyes oddly flat, like a shark. With a nod, he turned and lurched out. What a time for his foot to be asleep. Outside, he looked around to see where he was. Somehow, he hadn’t expected to see neat white painted numbers on the house. There was a SUV parked in the dirt back yard. Reid was overjoyed to see his cell phone in the back seat, along with his shoes. He tested the door. It was unlocked. Retrieving his phone, he dialed and resolutely ignored the sounds coming from inside as he called in to report on where he was. One of the killers had apparently caught the other. Agonized screams and yells tried to shred his nerves as he waited for an answer. 

“Are you all right?” Hotchner, his boss, demanded upon hearing the missing agent's voice.

“I'm ... OK. I wasn't hurt, much. Lump on my head and headache, but nothing more. Close, but ... saved again,” he admitted. He gave the address of the house. “It's getting ... noisy inside,” he appended as another agonized scream, muted by intervening walls and doors, reached his ears. “I should probably go stop her,” he started to say, automatically accepting that it was Jett with the upper hand.

Hotch overrode him, for which he found himself grateful “On our way! Stay where you are.”

Inside, Jett had caught the man who threatened Reid. Her strength surprised him as she twirled a three foot length of rebar like a baton. He backed away, wary of his opponent, regardless of how she looked to him. Rebar is not easy to shove through a human body as he knew from experience. So why did it seem to slide through his flesh so smoothly when the ragged end of the metal hit his body? She just kept coming until the piece drove into the wall behind him. He screamed in agony as he stopped but the rebar did not, ripping and rending as it passed through his body. His left arm quit working but he raked at her with his good hand, causing almost as much agony to himself as she did with her weapon. 

“Where's Jason?” Her question was conversational.

“I'm Jason!” he snarled through his pain, anger suffusing him and giving strength to his attempt to pull off the iron spike pinioning him to the wall. 

She faded back into the shadows only to reappear with another length of rebar. Oh, God! Why had he brought that stuff here? He grabbed for anything to deflect her to no avail. There was nothing close to him, no purchase for his bloody fingers.

Jett caught his right shoulder with the rusted tip and drove the metal through him into the wall, matching the other piece perfectly. He wasn't spreadeagled, but his arms were useless to him now while the pain made him twitch like a not quite dead moth pinned for display. His screams were shrill, hate and pain like twin burning needles in his flesh. 

“Where is Jason,” she asked again.

“I AM JASON!” he shrieked. “I am Jason. I am Jason. I'm Jason,” he babbled, tears streaming down his face making clean runnels in the dirt and blood. His throat was raw, yet he continued to avow that he was Jason. 

“OK,” she agreed with a nod. “Then where is my partner?” Just as Jett Tesuque was not her birth name, Jason might have collected one he liked. 

Snot drooling down his lip, the man facing her became crafty. “Won't tell.” Apparently he was still in there enough not to claim status as her partner. “Won't tell. Won't tell. Won't tell. Can't make me.”

He was wrong about that. Her fingers wrapped around his scrotal sac, carresing them as his eyes widened in disbelief. Her grip tightened as her tongue delicately traced the inner edge of her full lips. “In theory, there is a legendary martial arts technique for using one hand to rip off a man's testicles,” she remarked calmly, almost curiously, giving his sac a slight tug. “Personally … What?” She looked up brightly.

“No?” he answered weakly. “P-p-p-please.”

Jett looked confused. “No?”

“P-p-please … don't … not … not … please ...” He squirmed in her hand, shifting to get away from that touch. There was terror in his face that had little to do with the woman kneeling before him. 

“Tell me where Jason is.”

He shuddered. “You'll kill me,” he squeaked. That was the problem. If he didn't tell, he could live. If he did … It always hurt. Always. 

Jet chuckled, retaining her almost gentle grip. “No.”

The crafty look returned. “You lie.”

The fingertips dug into his skin through the fabric of his worn jeans. “I only lie in the line of duty, asshole. You … you are pure pleasure, not duty,” she pointed out with a bright eyed smile that left nothing unsaid.

Panic returned full force. He squirmed again, inflicting more damage where he was impaled. The pain kept his feeet on the ground, so he clamped his knees together, neatly trapping her hand and giving himself a nasty tweak. He yelled.

Outside, Jett could hear engines and then voices. “Now or never,” she told him, her fingers now tight on the skin between body and gonads. Her breathing was getting ragged as she prepared to finish his sacrifice. “You might not bleed to death ...” she admitted thoughtfully.

“Duluth! He's in Duluth!” he screamed again as she came to her feet, punched him in the stomach and fled in silence. By the time he could talk again, Jett had left the building.

Outside, Reid followed Hotch’s order, sitting on the floor of the SUV, his feet firmly on the ground in case he needed to take off after a fleeing perp. He wondered what he'd be doing if he was armed. Five minutes later, Hotch and company screeched to a halt in front of the house, lights flashing, sirens silent. The sounds had quieted. The other members of the team poured out of the two vehicles, guns at the ready. A raised eyebrow asked the question and Reid nodded. As far as he was aware, both the unsub and the woman were still in there.

A few moments later, as Hotch and the others went through the house to find Jason, Reid discovered he was wrong. The warm body pressed hard against him, sandwiching him between the curve of the SUV's fender and the woman behind him. Her breath against his neck and ear was warm and intense. She nibbled his ear lobe with a grin. “Hi.”

Reid shifted to face her. She smiled up at him, but tears were collecting in her eyes. Her mouth took his, rough, urgent and salty. His response was the equal of hers, his hands running up her back to her shoulders to just hang on while their tongues dueled and breathing was an afterthought. They broke and leaned against each other, panting. Her hands were cold against his chest, even through his shirt. 

“I have to go.”

“We've got him,” he tried to be reassuring.

Her smile was brutal, tormented, trembling through the tears that washed her cheeks. She shook her head. “It's not over,” she whispered. Her gaze shifted left, toward the front of the house. He looked and when he looked back, she was gone. Damn.

Hotch came out to let him know they'd found Weeks pinned to the wall by a chunk of rebar shoved through each shoulder. Weeks was quietly blubbering about why someone could want that psycho bitch and not him. Wasn't he worthy? What had he done wrong? The team leader looked the younger man over curiously. There was blood on his shirt now.

“Jett?” He asked. 

Reid just nodded with a sigh. “I … she said it's not over.”

Hotchner read the troubled look on Reid's face and decided the answers would come later. He assigned Reid to get Weeks delivered to the hospital. Tesuque was a problem for later. Reid guided the EMTs in to their subject, making sure Jason was restrained before they lifted him off the wall and onto the gurney. He made notes of everything the EMTs said for his report to Hotch who returned just as they were loading Weeks into the ambulance.

“They're ready to transport.” That was stating the obvious a part of Reid’s mind observed.

Hotchner nodded. “You're sure it's Weeks?” He had everyone's attention at that.

“It ... well, disregarding the dirt, blood and general lack of hygiene, it looks like him,” Reid answered.

“We need positive ID as soon as possible. Fingerprints at the least. Keep this place cleared.”

Reid went to the hospital. With a head wound, he needed to be checked out anyway. Jett had eluded them completely. Where was she? Why hadn't she killed Weeks? Why had she said that this wasn't over? He had too many questions and found he was really worried about the answers.


	4. Chapter 4

Jett hitched a ride with a biker headed to Albuquerque. He flew colors she recognized so she was a little surprised when he stopped, circled back and offered her a ride. In stolen jeans, t-shirt and sneakers half a size too large, she didn't look like much. Certainly not the sort of girl they'd want to abscond with. He surprised her again when he bought her lunch at a truck stop on the outskirts of town and dropped her at the Motel 6 with a fifty dollar bill. Sometimes the ones you least expected to play it true did so.

He grinned at her look. “Some days, it's worth being the good guy,” he told her in heavily accented English. “Besides, you don't look like the kind of woman who'd be easy to take down. Travel well.” With that he roared off on his bike. 

“Wow, riding off into the … sunset,” she murmured with a laugh. She turned in for a good night's sleep before setting out to continue her journey to Duluth. The next morning Eleanor Smythe-Johnston boarded the flight headed for Houston. She was replaced by an air headed Vally Girl type on the flight to St. Paul followed by a robust red head who arrived in Duluth looking little like either one.

The drive up I-35 was relaxing. Jett arrived in the city at dusk, the wind off the lake brisk and invigorating. It was amlmost midnight before she found what she was looking for. Much like the house in New Mexico, this one was in a quiet, deteriorating neighborhood where people minded their own business. 

Jett parked in the driveway and sat for a while. She was relieved that Jason wasn't a serial killer, that he had not left her with the Russians; but she wasn't ready to face the truth. There was a tiny possibility that Jason was still alive, she lied to herself as she stepped out of the vehicle and walked toward the dark house. 

The electricity was on, but most of the lights were out or broken. Like the house where she found Reid and cornered Jason's lookalike, this one was filled with boxes. Where would he keep his trophies? Not … someplace easily accessible. The door to the basement was locked. Unlike Chicago, Duluth was build on solid bedrock. The basement was functional, not slowly sinking into the soft ground. Jett stared at the door, her voice stuck in her throat, tears gathering in her eyes to drop in silence. No. Please. No, her thoughts echoed the pleas of the man she'd tortured to find Jason.

The basement stank, the odor of fear and decay rolled up the stairs with a physical presence. Somewhere in that darkness was her last leash, her partner. Jett stepped into the miasma descending into the Hell Jason's double had left behind. The lights worked in the blacked out rooms. Ground level windows were painted over so no light escaped, then layered with insulation foam on the inside. The first area was prosaic; washer, dry, boiler, water heater and three chest style freezer units humming contentedly next to an old fashioned refrigerator. 

Rusty stains showed on the refrigerator seal. Jett stood before it, hesitating to touch the shiny chrome of the handle. She swallowed hard and yanked opened the door. Anguish howled forth from her. Jason Weeks had died slowly inside the chill confines, his wrists and ankles bound with wire. His weakening struggles were obvious to her eyes as she pulled the cold dessicated body into her arms, mumbling to his deaf ears before her voice found purchase and she screamed her rage to the silencing walls. 

Exhausted, she became calm. Dry eyed Jett catalogued the damage to Jason's body. Fingers smashed, feet skinned and bones broken, arms and legs bruised, and sliced with precision. Oddly, there was little damage to the torso and none to the face at all. She rummaged through the rooms and found a clean canvas tarp and a box of contractor trash bags out of which she fashioned a body bag for her partner and stowed him with care in the back of the van she'd stolen. Then, with whispered promises, she returned to the house, opening the freezers and the three subterranean rooms without much interest in their contents. The police would handle the bodies, the torture implements, the restraints. Jett dialed 911 to report a small fire in the garden of the house before neatly setting a the blaze and leaving the doors to the house open. The news would interesting tomorrow.

Getting her trophy out of Duluth was simple. Taking it further afield was more difficult. People tended to look at you with distressing conclusions when they discovered dead bodies in transit. She purchased tickets on Amtrack for the journey back, getting a room instead of just seats and passing herself off as an archaeological student returning from an excavation with an important find. Jason's remains, carefully wrapped for preservation, were tucked into a shipping crate neatly addressed to Dr. Spenser Reid should anything happen on the trip and Jett not be able to deliver the package to her own supervisor. 

As luck would have it, whatever game was afoot, the opposition declined to be a problem on the trip. Jett and her cargo arrived back in Washington with no issues, not even a curious guard insisting on the shipment being ex-rayed to make certain there were no explosives inside. For the moment, whoever started the attacks on her and her partner was quiet. It was hardly reassuring. 

Jett arrived at the building in time to see the FBI profiling team heading into the building. By the time she parked and transferred Jason into a less conspicuous container, they were in conference with her supervisor, or so she believed. Retrieving a body bag was simple enough, getting Jason's loosening body into it, not so simple. Finally, she was set to enter the debrief on her own. 

Washington, D.C.

Hotchner and his team were debriefing with Jett's supervisor, as she had surmised, when there was a commotion in the hallway. Presuming others would take care of the problem, they continued the debrief. The supervisor seemed surprised to learn that Austin and Jason were related. The Agency ran thorough checks on their personnel, yet the existence of Austin was un-noted. Preliminary analysis placed them as brothers; placed for adoption very early. There was no record of why they were placed; no birth records had turned up and there was no record of the birth parents so far.

Jason was lucky. Within a month he was adopted while Austin moved from foster home to foster home. The litany of reasons started early and continued to his capture by the FBI. Austin had escaped criminal incarceration until now. 

The commotion resolved as the door to the room opened and Jett Tesuque entered, followed by a secretary trying very hard to do her job. 

“I know,” Jett told her breezily. “They're waiting for me. They need this new information I'm bringing,” she tossed back cheerily as she shoved a cart through the opening, nodding to everyone. 

“Tesuque,” her supervisor addressed her quietly, his attention divided between cart and agent. He nodded to the secretary to dismiss her. The woman scowled at Jett's back and closed the door muttering about agents and protocols.

Hotchner frowned at the bag on the cart, realizing what he was looking at and wondering just who Jett had brought in. Reid's attention was on the agent as he tried to read her while his companions were wary and ready to act. Jett didn't let things stay tense; she unzipped the bag, pulling the sides down and back to reveal the body. Gregson was on his feet immediately.

“Damn!” He met Jett's gaze directly, his mouth and brain searching for words that didn't come. Finally he settled for “I'm sorry.”

Jett relaxed, her head tilting to one side as she regarded him. “You didn't know,” she breathed and gave him a smile. “I didn't want to think you did.” 

Gregson looked questioning. “Knew?” he prompted.

Jett forestalled his question with a nod. “We were off duty, separate … even off duty we follow protocol,” she said with a sigh, her look bleak. “Someone found Jason's brother and aimed him at us, told him who Jason was.”

Reid nodded. It fit. Austin had no way to know about Jason otherwise. There was an unsub who didn't care how many died while eliminating Weeks and Tesuque. Except for Austin's actions, this was an internal matter. They finished up their report and Hotchner led his people out, Reid bringing up the rear. The silence behind them prevailed after the door closed. Their part in this operation was over.


	5. Chapter 5

Epilogue

Spenser Reid knew the car was following him, slowly pacing him as he walked from the bus stop to his apartment. Anger surged through him. Dammit, this was … without stopping to think, he moved to confront his stalker, stepping in front of the vehicle to stop it. Later he would recognize how testosteronally stupid that move was. The car came to a halt just brushing his trousers. The driver side window lowered. 

“Hmmm.”

His tirade about being stalked died in his throat as his jaw dropped slightly. “Jett?” He moved over to the driver's side of the vehicle. 

Jett Tesuque smiled up as him. Wrap around style sunglasses hid her eyes from him, but he could sense the up and down traverse of her look. “Hello,” she greeted him, the word like honey on her tongue. “How's life?” She opened the door and stepped out, letting him get a good look at the light silk sheath dress she wore, her high heels bringing her almost to his height. 

“I .. uh ..”Reid found himself without out words as Jett stepped forward and leaned in to kiss him, her arms around his shoulders, pulling him against her. Her tongue traced his lower lip before heading in for a deeper taste. He responded by wrapping his arms around her and returning the pull. 

Jett chuckled. “Mmmm. Any closer and you're going to be inside me,” she whispered in his ear. The breath and the comment made his color rise. “Love a man who can blush,” she added. He could hear the mischief in her voice. “I hear you have some leave time coming,” she purred.

His answer was a slightly disjointed nod as he looked into her eyes. He was agreeing to spend his leave with a functioning psychotic. His brain was having fits. His body was telling his brain to shut the fuck up, this was a one in a million chance. Her mouth found his and made a wordless explanation of just why he should throw caution to the winds and accept her invitation. They were headed to the airport before he pulled himself together enough to call in to request leave.

“A couple of weeks,” he finished up his request. “I have the opportunity to visit another country,” he explained. What country? “Mongolia. I'll be just outside Ulan Bator.” he finished. The request was granted before the flight to San Francisco boarded. 

A short time later Hotchner looked up from his reading with a quizzical look. His companion looked at him curiously. “It's Reid. He's taking a vacation.”

“Good for him,” the older man responded. “Where's he going? Silicon Valley?”

“Ulan Bator. Something about yurts,” Hotchner replied with a faint smile.


End file.
